ON BROADWAY - LIVE IN NYC 1995

This is a highly enjoyable live set from King Crimson's five-gig residency at the Longacre Theatre in New York, during the 1995 THRAK tour. It's a bit of a Frankenstein of a live album, presenting a full set list of two hours or so patched together from the five nights of the residency rather than presenting a single night all the way through, but it's highly enjoyable. Most of the best material from THRAK is represented, there's some improvisation, and when it comes to earlier incarnations of King Crimson's work there's a heavy emphasis on the 1980s lineup's work (unsurprisingly, since the double trio is basically the 80s lineup with an extra rhythm section). The only pre-Discipline material here consists of Red and The Talking Drum/Larks Tongues In Aspic Part II, which the band fit into their 1995 sound admirably.

Note that the VROOOM VROOOM set includes a hacked about and abbreviated version of this release as its second CD, but also that this release isn't quite the definitive version of this set: that honour goes to the version retitled New York THRAK from the THRAK boxed set, which among other improvements restores to this set the encore of Free As a Bird - a little Beatles cover in tribute to one of King Crimson's lesser-known influences. (You don't hear much Beatles in their music, though Happy Family on Lizard was supposedly a tribute to them.)